April 2016

Relapse. The word no cancer patient ever wants to hear. What does it feel like when you hear those words? Well I can’t exactly tell you, because I indirectly saw them on paper first. Last Friday, I got my second PET scan since my diagnosis. My first showed that I was in complete remission after two cycles of escalated BEACOPP. My results came back online the night before my scheduled chemo and Doctor’s appointment the next day. Deauville score 4.…

Over the weekend, I was determined to get outside and exercise. Since I can’t go to the gym because of the port in my chest, I figured walking would be a better option for me. The neuropathy in my hands has become almost unbearable, and has now spread to my legs, making it extremely difficult for me to even walk. While trying to walk .5 miles, I managed to fall to the ground three times. 4 cycles of escalated chemo…

Chemo has a way of sneaking up on you. This is my off week of cycle 4, before 5. The fact that one day you feel good, and the other you feel horrible is an understatement. This morning I was woken up drenched in sweat, to shooting pain all over my body around 2am, to the point where it’s so unbareable that it actually almost makes you physically sick. My chemo off weeks are usually the worst weeks, where I’m…

In life we find happiness in unexpected places. The universe throws us situations that will eventually lead us to what we define as “home”, which in my opinion is a feeling, not a person or a place. I’ve spent the last several years of my life always so preoccupied with what my next step would be, that I never really lived in the present. Ever. I was so career focused, and always wanted to be on top, always wondering what…

Trivial things. Before cancer, I used to care way too much. If someone didn’t like me, I cared. If someone had something negative to say about me, I cared. Now, if I cared about what every girl thought of me, I would never leave my condo! In my generation, a lot of women tend to feel threatened by other women. If someone is prettier than you, more intelligent than you, skinnier than you, more successful than you–they have something to…

The other day when I was in the elevator, a man in my building told me that I look different and asked if I got a Keratin treatment done to my hair. For those of you non-miamians reading this, Keratin is a straightening treatment that a lot of women in Miami have done to their hair, to humidity/frizz proof it. I laughed and told him that it’s a wig and I actually have Lymphoma. Like every other person that I…

Let me tell you a secret about life. It’s not about how someone prepares for everything to go right, it’s about how someone handles everything going completely wrong. Let’s all agree that chemo is no walk in the park. You can let it defeat you until your treatment is up, or you can let it empower you, the choice is yours. I created this blog to help motivate people going through cancer and let them know that they aren’t in…

I try to live as normal of a life as possible. So normal, that sometimes I completely forget that I have lymphoma. It’s 50% mental. I met an amazing girl on Instagram that follows my blog, she ended up living in Boston. My friend from Boston was visiting me, so I thought it would be perfect to have my friend deliver a small chemo care package to her before her first chemo session. As I was trying to write her…

There comes a point in your life where everyone you have dated in the past just becomes water under the bridge. As women, we’ve all dated our fair share of men who are under par, people that just aren’t good for us. Our friends and family can tell us as many times as they want that the person we are dating isn’t good for us. But we don’t listen, and we have to experience this for ourselves. We’ve all been…

Being a young, single Cancer patient, your first instinct is to freak out and think “I have cancer, what now? No one is ever going to want to date me!” Again, dating shouldn’t be a priority–getting better should. I don’t want to down play my symptoms because I have them all — my neuropathy in my hands is insane, I can barely feel them. I have excruciating stomach pain, I’m exhausted, I get nauseous, etc. I have the same symptoms…